Pina Bausch
a portrait of the Choreographer
Act I
Open scissors and you the wide-winged
The studio is filled with actors / dancers learning from each other’s
daily life-rhythm. Then acting about it and being criticized:
Pina:
- How long do you think a gesture can hold on to you? Whose entertaining
with can say the most of what is lost and yet remembered?
Act out: “I am a landmark.” No, no concessions - you yourself being
The Landmark. You may try it out – let’s say - in 3 steps?
a crow is passing I too leave wings wavering
Pina:
- Thanks Aviva, you’re doing it right. The audience is moved, sweats and
starts thinking.
Each of you develops and removes a singular distinguished presence. Yes, today
we are exercising a calendar of herded motions. Turn on one of your inner pages -
read the image, look at it - give it a pause in time, see -
that’s you: sleep as a preparation for those preparing change.
Invent the sign language for it -
each shows Pina how how shows Pina each each Pina Bausch shows
a balloon
taking hold of my breath
at the end of a string
(curtain)
Act II
The actors / dancers agreeing with their own movements, though at the same time
introducing a secret strategy of disagreement,
a persiflage that’s aimed at the viewers’
ability to learn how to disconnected themselves from former concepts.
Training the body a new language asks for patience. We’re watching the performers’
visible efforts. Everything that happens afterwards
is part of the audience’s
fantasy transforming Pina’s energies.
The players joining their mimics. As time goes by, each comedian / dramatist is trying
not to interfere with each other’s expression of pain.
Here is Pina’s niche, asking wordless: should I not correct you?
One actress starts spelling the word ‘leg’ only using her hands.
Laughing, the rest of the group gets into a sportive mood
myself a netball
if I could I wouldn’t
turn to either side
slow motion
a crawl from ebb to high tide
naked on the floor
through masks
the sweat of faces
blown apart
Dimmed lights. The younger performers arranging Questions for The Sun, reflecting
individual answers, transmitting calmed down actions as signals for dimmed hope.
the costumes
adapted jokes made up
during long try-outs
the last rehearsal will be
Pina’s first public performance
As the stage becomes constantly more lighted again, the group is drowned
unrecognizably into flags and flames.
(curtain)
Act III
The whole scenery is in turmoil. Seventeen actors are seen simultaneously
preparing different meals in one and the same kitchen,
then boys clean the bathroom floor, girls the bedroom. Song and anti-song.
On the walls and the ceiling a film about life on a nude beach is displayed.
A cloned transvestite offers service for half the price.
Seasonal colored gases, here autumnal, find their way down to the spectators.
Pina
-
Stop Tamina, stop right here: now you look like you are representing “the veiled woman of the West”
hiding behind cosmetic surgery
the pain
the plastic
when breasts move with
mother of pearl buttons
threatening
Tamina
- Even Cindy, my old lady dog, gives me a jealous look.
Pina
- Right, you two, porous and organized, will be not going to unite.
You are in a circulating process between performer
and an imagined audience.
Appearing paralleled, erotically justified, the substance of the content is in search
of its own identity.
- Tamina, may you blend your face with Aviva’s? Please materialize the possible
radiances developed by the two of you.
In a darkening olive green the stage revitalizes an interlaced emptiness.
Almost invisible strings reach out to link. Only a want-to-be couple
is trying hard
not to look back into the audience
with a rope
over the river
the quiet
A reasonable feeling occurs of really not being invited to the show.
Instead, the longer you keep watching the scenery the more you’re guided
into “the house of your own past” and headed into the environment of future events.
(Comments)
In this installation poetically twisted processes are supposed to guide the reader
into paradoxically convergences supposed to open up
new energies)
Cybernetically
a interactive play in seven scenes
Scene I
(time circular)
on the beach
she says
imagine sea light
salt crystals
hardening the view
Scene II
(time moving in all directions)
walk on a neighbor’s path
one stone edged sharply
obsidian
more we dare to touch
in charge of fire
Scene III
dark matter, in her eyes the health of distance
when the plane lands in a burst of flames
barefaced in transformation starboard a first touch
of essential ground temporarily not embodied
a soul enters the mosaic of a time shredding reptile
it is mushroom, hot consistency rooming with a taste
of sudden entry. No disc preformatted, abundant energy
offers a first tickle to Anna’s guts:
the three months old fetus rebuilding its watery boundaries
into the unnamed. Slip, slid, sliding into a stream of fear
the pilot on his nomadic journey
the navigator’s needle oscillating
to a picture in his wallet: there, his daughter, nineteen,
college, with the breast of a young surfer bursting leeward
where the transparent sail changes sides
there lingers a logic of no withdrawal from such storms
in advance, a manifold of encounters
Scene IV
- Since you seem to ask, yes, holding a save distance,
I was to stay on a roof filming both planes curving
closer and finally moving right into the towers.
- Did you know anybody working there at the time
it happened?
- No - well, only Prom.
- Who?
- Prometheus..
TV running without interruption. People watching –
for several times daily - the tragedy of the two towers
burning and crashing.
After a while, their thoughts and gestures begin to change.
In one way or the other they feel and act like participants.
Scene V
(intertwined material / matter)
Rain gutter, we listen to rust moving on.
Blurred perspectives along the roads leaving Lower Manhattan.
Talks under coercion, deepening folds around peoples’ mouths.
- Nothing you would leave simply for its size?
- Would you go please on your knees,
deeds and maps are in the lower drawer-
I know it’s jammed.
- Because of your heavy flint collection.
- Developing their own identity further, the animals,
put under pressure became stone - and survived.
Scene VI
(space as an interface, an interval)
forty:love
partners play as if their rackets
gather the pressure
of the ball hit
since the wind doesn’t want it
Scene VII
late exchange
the mail box door
keeps squeaking
Discussing already planed trips extensively because oil
is precious, seducing people to live up to an overheated rhythm.
so little more
to know about a butterfly
time folded before the wind
Briefing
an inter-genre play
Material Technique Mental material
Network Electronically produced The "secret riddle" as
(not avoidable) space = sound as text an available condition
Designed sentences/voices Abolition of conventional
in a pattern of irregular valuations between people
repetitions and "inanimate" objects
repeating the text
simultaneously The passing on of infos
through the object itself:
waves in a speaker / listener
JEALOUSY: Night-way I'm walked to with my sisters
COLLAPSE: The day-peoples' side warming without smoke
JEALOUSY: I'm a traveling entertainer my face is glowing in the dark
COLLAPSE: Are more hands open than you wanted to
JEALOUSY: What light is it starlight or is it a sun’s light
COLLAPSE: JEALOUSY:
left-handed more night-side's ridge
right to the unknown its saw-toothed sentence
column therefore
affinities we may recognize
when we awake gliding access
COLLAPSE: JEALOUSY:
I prefer either fresh laugh
or rained-in on two cheeks
rosebuds in the house of separating
you would lay aside scheduled
or not rushing water
Oscillations
an interplay
Material Material Material
hardly in place to join in antedated
Scene I
SCHEME (with no helmet): CHORD (in shorts): PERHAPS (naked):
bicycling chant traverses sand area
the tears in my eyes our voices up her eyes floating down
near South Central LA in variables on an hour-glass
in one curve the rubber draws at this desert cave little we're negotiating
a question mark of myself not yet tempered in rigor of this minute
SCENE II
SCHEME:
You're putting a calm eye on this property like saying good-bye.
CHORD:
Well, do you want to see a home less less symmetrically organized?
PERHAPS:
Yes, but besides this, our contract with the park ranger is nearing its term -
choosing will be a must for us three.
SCHEME:
Your mind-mechanics are impressive. But how are we going to divide our very nature?
CHORD:
Spasmodically, I guess: SCHEME keeps the big lunch box.
PERHAPS always wanted the lately centered 22 magnum and I,
well I love
my little motor glider.
PERHAPS:
Sound's agreeable. You know living together as three people was fun.
Only two of us alone - I fear aren't obliged to stay put.
One alone may be save as long as capacities do not run out - don't you think so?
SCHEME:
I'm trying to mind it: We may make it, folks we may not make it.
Somehow I feel motivated like salmon when the ocean's temperature rises
and the fishes are designated to migrate. There isn't much sangfroid in fins
before the fishermen set sail to a harbor. Apropos the harbor -
what is a harbor saying to you? Only "Keep going". "Have a nice trip".
"I'm not going to see you tomorrow".
CHORD:
Well yes, for a change, I'll watch the taciturnity of a low tide’s wave nibbling
on driftwood
harbored
perhaps the chord of a scheme
in cat eyes
Interactions
a play
Lend material Processed material Skinned material
Word / Space O ONE heat in kettles
steam
left alone
Sound - space Computation dawn he leaves
shall I meet a bat's beam
humming
Touch - space Hysteria she says
(self-hypnosis) smell induces a flower
see the morning-gate?
poppies call
orange at no distance
Light - space Illuminated data warm breath a shine
he returns from her friend
the moon
Unsaturated or barely fermented material (performed in opposition)
We ask the text if there's something unattainable about RIVER ROCK,
DRESSLITTLE or EXILE. Personalized, we transfer them on stage:
RIVERROCK rearranges fossilized fish from the kitchen to the bathroom.
DRESSLITTLE, hand-wringing tries to correct opinions held in public.
EXILE returns through a tuba leaking mental particles out of the seemingly
non-physical into an archive. Slowly, light helps dawn to measure
the square of a table offering the servings: milk, juice, tea
RIVERROCK: DRESSLITTLE: EXILE:
open says it short refutation, Sir ripples on my tea
of twisted directions if it is mine the waving of her eyelash
with the oval of a mouth it's not untended comes across the table
traveling brief visit a nest near nimble then the flit of wings
at the Milky Way north wind has no access announces a butterfly
Soft Sparks
an inter-genre cat and mouse play
Material Actors
Scene I
hunger masculine AJAX: (deep into files)
his fish still flapping Well, Penelope, you didn't want to
for his older sister recognize that there is no more
copyright. On the NET
aren't things owned by all?
Scene II
fame PENELOPE: (putting on rouge )
folding a cat's teeth Ugh - oneness? Are you really arguing
into mouse-fur that the Net offers a place for free?
Scene III
soft touch AJAX:
sparks lighten the comb Possibly - but look, honey, I think
before bedtime the server is out to lunch
Scene IV
summer night PENELOPE:
blade by blade Don’t get vulgar, please. You know
the moon in grass-beds my eyes are already trapped in yours
we avoid to talk at the icon for "message"
the lizard almost out
A Pair of Points
an inter-genre play
Material___________________________________________________________
shifting parallels liquid choices shaded by thought
it's the monk's mouth push/pull a minimum sad saddled save
not talking then let the line go the linkage
one wall reflective with the stream’s fish or the irregular verb
listen rain another one of its spins used for certain occasions
kissing his tongue wish I had those fins you may not learn to like
Material______________________________________________________
rejoined to gamble with topographical
what month is it clown she says new tires
January I don't want to stay the pattern on his driveway
by the way only overnight we read
into the broken profile
nothing anymore concrete
Material_______________________________________________________
adding to the image with no surroundings to be fused
of blue
on board nothing, of course milk-white mail
flapping the foresail we would blame moon-stamped
not yet a breeze by seize he answers
Scenes
PULSE (185 / 105 / blood pressure)
ECLIPSE (temporarily occurring. Today wearing rainbow colors)
PULSE: I am embarrassed, because for the first time meeting a Celestial Persona.
New context discrepancies made unique breath / airbag
ECLIPSE:
I don't know if I'm going to like the challenge of materials seemingly in disorder.
PULSE:
Even not so if they enlarge the property of your mind?
ECLIPSE: (takes off her sunglasses)
You don't know me - other trespassers I used to guide to hell. Now,
do you want me to look at a poem
as an "imagined competition,"
let's say between different periods of time?
PULSE:
Well, there's competition between fish, birds, bulls (turning sideways) here,
look at the menu, even competitors after death?
I would like to extend that to rivalry between light conditions that alter ivory,
sprinklers, negatives or – say, what's under the skin
of a first salute?
ECLIPSE:
I don’t know; but what is it that comes from a complex of scattered syllables,
from relocating, dislocating language?
Does that require a map to be read?
PULSE:
No - yes, since everything gets mapped somewhere in the fluids
before you can instinctively follow its course.
ECLIPSE:
Instinctively? I heard the work on a text is supposed to be fun.
PULSE:
That's the point, Clipsy. Some readers may think they can track a text in no time.
Others are slow-reading creatures
through the dark of a night promising nothing.
ECLIPSE: (to the audience)
Clipsy Clipsy! damn it, I'm not Clipsy, I'm a lunatic, period!
(her moon is moving; she, being very young appears in earthly light)
Oh, Pulse, you mean 'till a surprise happens, like an unexpected contact between
a European-American and a Vietnamese?
(self-confident) My lover says I'm okay.
Her eyes up to the mayor, seated at the balcony using binoculars.
PULSE:
Does your friend allow you to consider alterations, fallacious moves
that keep spinning around you till you feel like, well -
captured in a cocoon?
ECLIPSE: (takes a deep breath standing, one foot slips off the Birkenstocks)
A warm one - transparent?
NO - play
material the drummer static conveyed
masks before his hands following but not yet
masks behind it a parable quickened
__________________________________________________________________________
we may recognize he's in a dialogue step to no step
two faces shown in one sheath-covered fingers hit seven seconds
both masked the flute (he licks it softly) his pause
on request separating night in front there was movement
turned outside in from night behind a timbre movement was
the body of another at attention the right toe first
previous movement as if the owl of a call separated
waiting looks for a drummer slips for two inches -
not active in this play 'till to lean on the planks
ancestors reach to restore it the scope of this space the audience shaken
a new home a message in waving garments
signals sent calculated or not hidden access
encounter floor and ceiling predominant excess
return to the mouth with its constantly floating shades
recollecting their own breath quiver of no-matter unfolded
when inhaled the musician sits the choir as a pattern
they absorb themselves since years beside him of irregular flowers
in a newly formed contact his fast responding ropes
the unknown marches on elbow and wrist spun
parallel to this audience interpreting this in the spinning
the mask suggests once the pain of a ghost her moon
I'm the filter, the membrane celebrating disorder and his mask
that makes you part of it echoes burning off
what I see as uninterrupted what cat-skin holds to project connectedly
performed stillness in a dwelling after death with half a gesture
stage light may fade wind flits by little seasoned
on the ghost’s powdered surface of our horizontal view the ritual
the expression stays can beat the vertically on a journey
whether moon light or sun powered intonation for the fire
was here for a while beyond drum of one turn a year
Unobtrusive Permissible
On stage, the voices of two actors represent persons who, through a newly
legalized medication, learned to keep on check
the destructions terror-TV-shows
are made for.
In a distance of 25 feet from one another, the female voice starts out reciting
the first two lines, followed by a male voice repeating them.
Each word seemingly
spoken with some delay, comparable to the feeling when a passenger’s
flight number and destination
at an airport’s screen flares up surprisingly late.
Since the arrival at the target location is still not typed in, an unsecured situation
is still mentally upheld.
The lighting changes at a scale of white to violet during the recitation of the first
two lines, then in a mix of blue and gray
it slowly remodels itself to clear
cobalt blue at the very end.
on a ship’s bow the nymph alone against the spray that matters
some sound sent as we obey to not to speak arriving as migrating tongues
within a breeder’s radiation the pregnant woman changes homes
fishes born without fins by the shark’s pier wrecked submarines
above an Indian’s tent three times welling smoke
transmutable whispers insurgents separating glimmer from ashes
hands of a clock moving along with the hostages’ hood sign language
games inhabited to grow only inmates away
WWW.
double you
double it
double her
double us
double his double hers double ours
The scenery looks a bit as if it was copied from a Greek vase where couples
used to rest on stone beds. But here,
at an American home before TV,
we are seeing a sofa where a couple and their pets gather for a ball game,
one partly on top of the other, serving two purposes: a twofold victory or defeat,
double-bind, double-blinded,
double-breasted - as you like it. Dope plays a role,
for sure a double-edged situation because the cop may drive by
and call it
a double-park.
Wanda gets up, and even thought the play only begins, she shuts the curtains.
Winfred
- Look at that – my goodness, this discussion is going on and on, telling us how
we can double-quick increase the number of our offspring…
Wanda
- Do you mean, after all we have discussed about not having children -
remember it was you who insisted we stay DINK (double income, no kids) –
do you really want twins?
Winfred
- Oh, give me a break, sweetie - by gum, no! I have other things in mind.
Wanda
- So what the hell are you referring to?
Winfred
- Well, look: There is the NET, hanging around inside of the invisible,
unknown spaces. Did you hear of the guys who think the net is double-faced,
and we are caught into it? They are not wrong - we are occasionally feeling like
someone’s catch, still jiggling. But check closely - how about the fun joining
the net as a double-digit way of radiating messages out to neighbors, friends,
even to enemies? Think of people who respond to your 3-liners when you used
the technique of phrase and fragment -beside incorporating a double meaning.
Or, well, in case you want to let your self flow into 5-liners…
Wanda
- Aha! Poetry is what you are talking about? It sounds cool, but you are
making me hot. Gee, can I double, triple myself, write a sequence,
collaborate with all of my senses, with my unenviable past,
my bubbling presence and, oh my Lord, can I channel down images of
spiritual pathways, and go “pivoting” with them as far as my hands can reach out?
Winfred
- Yeah, and with the however so curiously shaped views of others -
connected to www. we may invite a third, a fifth,
a seventh party to join our efforts, and enlarge the concept of “Symbiotic Poetry”.
On the threshold to spirituality, collaboratively written poetry takes on the role
to evaluate the unknown, the so far unarticulated.
stem
cells swim upstream
night visions
double-banked
the bodies to the same oar
Wanda
- May I add the techniques of twisting / shifting / leaping? In fact what we are
doing here is transmitting light particles of a digital system to the surface
of a screen and thereby electrifying the neuronal system of the apparently
lonely ones.
Winfred
- You know the drill. It makes me think even more about combining text and
verse, written either by a single poet or even by a double-tongued one.
There, the 5-liner can be set up and functioning as a vertical plane,
visually constituting the power of a column at the core of horizontally
arranged prose-territories. Want to try it out?
Wanda
- Let’s sniff on it – work out a concept. May I borrow your Montblanc?
By the way, here is Machi’s Japanese cell phone number. Please give her a buzz
and ask her if she’s in the mood to share our party line at 10 pm., theme: “The
very nature of greeneries and affairs of the heart in times of an ongoig war.”
Winfred gets up arranging comfortable chairs and sets up equipment for the
scheduled night session.
Winfred
- Please remember our voices will be broadcasted; we should have liquids available -
what is it that would work to our advantage for tonight?
Wanda
- Irish coffee.
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